Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/178

 the sewing-machine agent from Leopolis, the undertaker from Vanderheide's Grove, the bootlegger from St. Luke, the red fat man from Melody who had no known profession.

Once (still do men tell of it gratefully, up and down the Valley), they played for seventy-two unbroken hours, in the office of the Wheatsylvania garage. It had been a livery-stable; it was littered with robes and long whips, and the smell of horses mingled with the reek of gasoline.

The players came and went, and sometimes they slept on the floor for an hour or two, but they were never less than four in the game. The stink of cheap feeble cigarettes and cheap powerful cigars hovered about the table like a malign spirit; the floor was scattered with stubs, matches, old cards, and whisky bottles. Among the warriors were Martin, Alec Ingleblad the barber, and a highway engineer, all of them stripped to flannel undershirts, not moving for hour on hour, ruffling their cards, eyes squinting and vacant.

When Bert Tozer heard of the affair, he feared for the good fame of Wheatsylvania, and to every one he gossiped about Martin's evil ways and his own patience. Thus it happened that while Martin was at the height of his prosperity and credit as a physician, along the Pony River Valley sinuated the whispers that he was a gambler, that he was a "drinking man," that he never went to church; and all the godly enjoyed mourning, "Too bad to see a decent young man like that going to the dogs."

Martin was as impatient as he was stubborn. He resented the well-meant greetings: "You ought to leave a little hooch for the rest of us to drink, Doc," or "I s'pose you're too busy playing poker to drive out to the house and take a look at the woman." He was guilty of an absurd and boyish tactlessness when he heard Norblom observing to the postmaster, "A fellow that calls himself a doctor just because he had luck with that fool Agnes Ingleblad, he hadn't ought to go getting drunk and disgracing—"

Martin stopped. "Norblom! You talking about me?"

The storekeeper turned slowly. "I got more important things to do 'n talk about you," he cackled.

As Martin went on he heard laughter.

He told himself that these villagers were generous; that their snooping was in part an affectionate interest, and inevitable in a village where the most absorbing event of the